The Founders

August and Marie Krogh(1874-1949) (1874-1943)

The story of Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium began on an autumn day
in 1922, when August and Marie Krogh arrived in the United States by
sea. August Krogh was a professor at the University of Copenhagen and
had received the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1920. The couple had
been invited to the US by researchers at Yale University, who had
asked August Krogh to lecture throughout the country on his medical research.

On their tour of the US, the couple heard daily reports of people
with diabetes being treated with insulin – a hormone discovered in
1921 by two Canadian researchers, Banting and Best. Marie Krogh was
particularly interested in the treatment. Herself a doctor, she had in
1914 also become the fourth Danish woman to earn a doctorate in
medicine. She was a researcher with her own medical practice and had
several patients with type 1 diabetes. Marie Krogh herself had type 2
diabetes. It was Marie, who suggested that her husband contact the
University of Toronto where the first life-saving insulin extract had
been produced.

Permission to manufacture insulin

During their stay in the US, August Krogh wrote to Professor
Macleod, head of the institute in Toronto where the first insulin
extract had been produced.

The letter were well received, and after a meeting in Toronto, the
couple returned to Copenhagen in December 1922 with permission
to manufacture and sell the vital insulin in Scandinavia. August Krogh
founded the company Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium in partnership with
the Danish medical doctor Hans Christian Hagedorn, and with financial
assistance provided by the Danish pharmacist August Kongsted.

Hans Christian Hagedorn(1888-1971)

Marie Krogh wrote in a letter from the US to her colleague in
Copenhagen, Dr Hans Christian Hagedorn who together with the
pharmacist Norman Jensen had developed a very precise method of
measuring blood sugar: “Since I believe that you… will be interested
in this preparation, I have persuaded my husband to write Dr Macleod
in Toronto and ask him if it would be possible to obtain its method of
manufacture, making it possible for you to perform experiments with it
in Denmark.” Hagedorn liked the idea.

The first insulin

The day after the Krogh couple’s return to Copenhagen, Krogh and
Hagedorn decided that some intensive research was required. The first
experiments took place at Hagedorn’s house and at Krogh’s institute,
the Laboratory of Zoophysiology, and shortly afterwards – on 21
December 1922 – the two men succeeded in extracting a small quantity
of insulin from a bovine pancreas. Krogh and Hagedorn were thrilled.
In the spring of 1923, the first patients were treated with insulin
manufactured by Krogh and Hagedorn.

Hagedorn stopped practising medicine to become the head of the
laboratory, which was given the name Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium. At
the same time, they began marketing the first Scandinavian insulin
product. The company Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium was thus a reality,
and 1923 is today considered the year in which Novo Nordisk was
established.

An honorary doctorate

Over the following decades, Hagedorn was continually at the
forefront of diabetes innovation. In 1932 he and August Krogh
established the prestigious Steno Memorial Hospital, a research and
treatment centre for people with diabetes. In 1936 he and Norman
Jensen discovered protamine, a substance that could prolong the effect
of insulin; the discovery was hailed as a sensation.

Protamine was later added to an insulin which carries Hagedorn’s
name: Neutral Protamine Hagedorn, or NPH insulin, developed at Nordisk
Insulinlaboratorium in 1946. And in 1978, a research facility at Steno
Memorial Hospital was also named after him: The Hagedorn Research Laboratory.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of insulin, Hagedorn
was among the scientists who were to receive honorary doctorates from
the University of Toronto, where insulin was discovered in 1921.
Hagedorn died in 1971 - before he could accept the honour.

August Kongsted(1870-1939)

The pharmacist August Kongsted, owner of the pharmaceutical company
Løvens kemiske Fabrik (Leo Pharmaceutical Products), provided
the financial backing that made it possible to establish Nordisk
Insulinlaboratorium in 1923.

He was approached in December, 1922 by August Krogh and Hans
Christian Hagedorn, who needed money to perform insulin research.
Kongsted offered to pay for the research and help them start
production. In return, he asked that their first insulin product be
named Leo – the Latin word for lion. Experiments began, and in
the spring of 1923, Krogh and Hagedorn were able to market Insulin
Leo, the first insulin product in Scandinavia. The company was
organised as an independent institution in 1924, at which time
Kongsted joined Hagedorn and Krogh as part of the management.

Harald and Thorvald Pedersen(1887-1961)
(1887-1966)

When Krogh and Hagedorn began to manufacture insulin at Nordisk in
1923, they agreed that Harald Pedersen was the right man to build the
machines they needed for insulin production. Harald Pedersen, who
originally was a smith and later became a machinist, was an unusually
talented inventor. He had, after an accident at work in which he lost
an eye, worked for Krogh for a number of years as manager of the
mechanical workshop at the Zoophysiology Laboratory. Harald’s brother,
Thorvald Pedersen, was a pharmacist who had been working at the Danish
company Dansk Soyakagefabrik when he was hired by Nordisk in the
autumn of 1923 to analyse the chemical processes involved in insulin production.

The two brothers’ work for Nordisk did not last very long, however.
Thorvald Pedersen did not get on with Hagedorn, and in April 1924
things came to a head and Hagedorn fired him. Out of loyalty to his
brother, Harald Pedersen decided to hand in his notice to Krogh, even
though he enjoyed working for him.

The brothers set up on their own The two brothers decided
to try to manufacture insulin themselves. The brothers made a good
team, and in the spring of 1924 they succeeded in producing a stable
liquid insulin product which they called Insulin Novo. At the same
time, Harald Pedersen designed a special syringe – the Novo Syringe
– that ensured that patients could comfortably inject themselves
with correctly dosed insulin. The brothers were ready to place their
products on the market, but doubted whether they could cope with the
marketing themselves. Therefore they contacted Nordisk to offer some
form of cooperation. Krogh and Hagedorn turned the offer down,
however, and the brothers decided to do it alone.

The brothers named their
firm Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium, and on 16 February 1925 they
sent a letter of introduction to Danish pharmacists, informing them
that Insulin Novo and the Novo Syringe were now on sale. That date
is regarded as the date on which Novo was founded.

Who we are

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with 95 years of
innovation and leadership in diabetes care. This heritage has given us
experience and capabilities that also enable us to help people defeat
other serious chronic conditions: hemophilia, growth disorders and
obesity.

Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk employs
approximately 42,200 people in 80 countries and markets its products
in more than 170 countries.